by Natalie Lux
Indeed, the second we walked in I noticed people pulling out their phones and snapping pictures of me, but I didn’t care. As annoying as it was, I was used to the attention by now.
I hadn’t been in town for that long, but I knew the word that I was back had spread like wildfire. Eva Campbell is coming to town! Oh my God! Think she’ll sign my boots? Is she filming here? When can I get her autograph?
As far as I knew, my dad, Tracy, and Morgan were the only ones who knew I was coming. Fortunately, Sheila didn’t seem to be as much of a bitch as she’d been when I’d met her. But there was still time.
I’d met her after my mom left unexpectedly in my freshman year of high school. No note, no “hey I’ll be gone awhile, look after dad,” no nothing. Just poof. It had taken me a long time to get over her, but I’d pushed her from my thoughts almost for good by now.
Sheila, on the other hand, wasn’t much better. She and my dad had met at some convention he was running for his company and they started dating towards the end of my senior year. From day one, she hadn’t liked me and acted like she was my mother already, even though my dad had insisted they were never going to get married. Ha.
I definitely wasn’t ready to fight with anyone, least of all the lady my dad was about to marry. As much as I still disapproved of her, I loved my dad to death. I couldn’t let him get married alone.
But I’d barely had time to take a shower before Morgan and Tracy were at my doorstep screaming and hugging me. As down in the dumps as I was, they never failed to cheer me up. Even after I’d left town, we’d kept in touch.
“See you telling me that just makes me want to turn around more,” I grinned, turning my head towards the door. The grin slipped off my face faster than I thought possible.
In an instant, my heart leaped to my chest, threatening to pound out of my body. Memories flood my mind as I think back to my first kiss, the first time he’d put his arms around me, the taste of his lips, the way his warm body molded into mine so perfectly…
Luckily, Reid hadn’t seemed noticed me yet. I slunk in my chair as him and another familiar-looking guy with short blond hair glanced around and found a spot at the bar, calling for a drink, taking some stares off me for the moment as the horde of girls getting drunk in the corner flocked over to them as if they were magnetic. I whipped my head back around and stared straight ahead, pretending he wasn’t there.
“He doesn’t seem to have changed much,” I muttered, knowing perfectly well what I was bullshit. Even when Reid played football in high school, he wasn’t that fucking big.
They giggled at me as my face turned bright red. They were the only ones who knew how special Reid had been to me. What they didn’t know, and what I could never bring myself to tell them, is how bad things had gotten all those years ago.
I didn’t want to see him. I knew coming back that if he still lived here, there was a good chance I’d run into him in such a small college town. But I’d hoped that dealing with one lying bastard was enough for one week. I didn’t need to deal with another.
“You’ve been gone too long, Eva,” said Tracy, her eyes bright. “Reid really… um, what’s the saying? ‘Grew into himself.’”
She wasn’t kidding. Even with the quick glimpse I’d gotten, the only reason I knew it was him was the piercing blue-green eyes and Morgan’s nonstop giggles. But now, I could tell he’d gotten even taller and bulkier.
Reid had gotten his haircut and it looked like he’d cleaned himself up from the skinny, long-haired kid with the barbed wire tattoos. He’d always been tall, but now he looked well over six feet. Yeah, as much as I hated to admit it, he looked downright fucking delicious.
Nope, can’t think about that. He’s not mine anymore and he never really was. Just the guy you lost your virginity to and had your heart shattered by. Ignore him.
“You’re gonna go say hi to him, right?” pressed Morgan, her gaze drifting over to Reid and his buddy sitting at the bar, doing shots, mercifully far away from our table.
I shook my head in disgust and finished my third whiskey sour, trying to ignore the pounding in my chest as I fought to sneak another look at them. No. You don’t want to open that door again.
“Nope. I’m not really interested,” I said, trying to keep my voice as light and casual as possible. “I have a boyfriend anyway.” Even that was hard to spit out.
Morgan and Tracy rolled their eyes in unison, seeing through my semi-lie just as I was frustratingly sure they would.
“Come on, Eva, you think we don’t watch the news. It’s all over TMZ how you two haven’t spoken in like 3 days! You dumped his sorry ass because he cheated!” said Morgan, gesturing with her phone.
I couldn’t help but laugh. I hadn’t even turned my phone on since the last call with my agent telling her where I’d be for a week. Of course, the news was bound to get out quickly enough. Everything always did with me it seemed. One of the major downsides of being famous was the lack of privacy and it was getting old pretty damned quick.
“Well, he was a true blue asshole,” I admitted, and told them about how I walked in on him fucking the groupie. Fortunately, that seemed to keep them busy enough to drop the subject of Reid for five minutes. It also helped that I could finally tell the story out loud to people I enjoyed being around—it felt like a clunky weight was coming off.
“That fucking prick!” exclaimed Tracy, emptying her drink. “We should egg his house, just like after Morgan caught Baxter cheating!”
“Definitely! You bring the eggs and I’ll bring the toilet paper!”
“Thanks, guys, but I just want to be over him and move on,” I said laughing. I snuck another quick glance over at the bar where Reid was laughing with a pair of girls he’d no doubt bring home at the end of the night. It had been seven years since I’d seen him and my heart still seethed with anger imagining him with another girl.
Was he still hanging out with the girl I’d seen him kiss back in high school? Did he ever think about me or what might have been if he hadn’t cheated?
No, Eva, you’re over him. Fuck him, you’ll never talk to him again. You don’t want that drama again.
“And I don’t need another asshole in my life like Reid Mannix.”
4
Reid
I had to force myself to pretend not to notice her. I saw her group of girlfriends immediately, giggling and pointing to me nonstop. That was fine with me. They could point and stare all they wanted, but I was not going to walk over there. The bar provided a nice comfort to all outside distractions involving old flings.
“Did you notice Eva Campbell’s back in town?” asked Ron, gesturing towards their table with a twinkle in his eye. I forced myself to smile, nod, and ordered another drink. Ron Harper, the bartender, was a good guy and was loved by everyone around town, but the last thing I wanted to talk about right now was my ex.
Almost immediately, Dom and I had gotten converged on by the usual group of sorority girls and groupies practically begging us to fuck them, but it just wasn’t working for me. I didn’t even feel like getting shitfaced the way I always liked to anymore. It had taken a long time before we finally got rid of them, promising to “see what happened” after we got back in town from the bowl game next week.
“What do you think about meeting with the agent coach was telling us about?” asked Dom, sipping his drink. We’d finally been able to shake the girls off when Dom told them to meet him at his apartment later. He could tell I was trying to think about anything other than Eva Campbell.
It was difficult to ignore the sounds of laughter emanating from Eva’s table. I knew they were talking about me. Of course they were – I was her friend and the star football player and she’d become the perfect movie star. We should have been destined to be together, but me, being the asshole that I am, fucked it all up. Of course.
Even still, I couldn’t help but steal a glance every now and then towards the table. Eva looked better than I’d ever seen her when she lived
back here. Of course, everyone here had known her as the quiet, sometimes mischievous little girl who liked to get into trouble and had a knack for acting. But no one in town could ever have dreamed she would become a famous Hollywood starlet one day.
I glanced over again and my heart pounded as she looked over at me at the same time, our eyes meeting. God, she was so much more beautiful than I remembered. Her hair had turned dark, probably for her latest movie. Her bright red lipstick seemed to wink at me from across the room. God, what I wouldn’t give to walk over there, snatch her up, and bury my face between her legs again…
I swear I could feel the heat from her body from over here; I knew she was thinking about me just as much as I was thinking about her. She looked away quickly and went back to her conversation with her friends, but I sat there, watching, unable to take my eyes off her.
What had she been up to all these years? I wondered now and again how many men she’d been with whenever she made the news with a new boyfriend. I knew it wasn’t healthy for my sanity, but I couldn’t help myself. To be honest, she’d been my first and only love. The only one to look past the high school football star that I’d been and see me for who I really was. It was impossible to forget about her. Even though I knew she hated me for what she’d seen.
I couldn’t say that I blamed her, but I could have done more… No, I should have done more. I should have put her before anything else and… No. It wasn’t healthy to think about the past. I downed my drink like it was water and glanced at my watch. Almost time to get out of here and go to bed.
“Can you just leave us alone? We’re not really interested,” her friend, Morgan’s voice, floated from across the bar, raised only slightly. My head swiveled around for what seemed like the hundredth time and saw they were surrounded by three ugly looking college-aged kids wearing Greek letters.
I instantly recognized them from the Kappa Tau fraternity, who’d gotten into trouble for date raping a girl the year before and almost got kicked out of school. Somehow it didn’t surprise me that they’d be creeping on the most gorgeous girl in the city.
I grimaced; most of the frat guys that frequented this bar weren’t the kind of guys you’d introduce your parents to anyway. The stereotype was real when it came to the dickbags around here. I looked around, but Ron must have been in back preparing food or something.
I looked over at Dom and I could tell we were on the same page: hot young actress back home for the first time in four years? It was only a matter of time before the douchebags started to pour in. As much as I wanted to ignore her and pretend I’d forgotten about her, I couldn’t let that happen.
“We just want a picture!” whined the biggest one, leaning across their table and grabbing Eva by the arm. “We’re not leaving until you take a picture with us!”
That was all it took. Dom and I jumped to our feet, my mind immediately flashing back to when I was a kid and my dad had grabbed my mom that way. It had become a habit for him to grab both my mother and me like that and make us “take our medicine.” It wasn’t until after my mom passed away that I’d gotten bigger and was able to defend myself from him.
Without thinking, we strode over to the table and I yanked the kid by his collar, tossing him across the room with ease. Dom was facing the others, fists raised. I hadn’t broken a sweat but I was breathing heavily, adrenaline coursing through me. The punk landed in a crumpled heap, glaring up at us, probably only just realizing who we were.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I snarled, furious. “They want you to leave them alone so get the fuck out.”
“And what are you gonna do?” said one of the skinnier ones, the fear in his eyes betraying his words.
“We’re gonna make sure you’re never able to touch another girl in your life, kid,” growled Dom, glowering down at him. “Get out before we give you a taste of what we mean.”
As angry as I was, I almost wanted to grin; Dom was my best buddy and I could always count on him to have my back. Any time there was a fight in football or a fight with another fraternity, he had my back.
Whenever we got into it with particularly obnoxious frat boys or rival football squads, he’d always play the good cop to my bad one. But no one had ever fucked with him more than once.
Even though there were three of them, I knew we could easily take them down. And the last thing any frat guy wanted was to get in a fight with a football player. As “popular” as those fuckers were in Kappa Tau, they had nothing on us. They gave us one last ugly look and then seemed to think it was probably better to avoid a scene, scampering out of the bar.
“Are you guys okay?” I asked them, my eyes fixed on Eva, trying to ignore the pounding in my chest I knew had nothing to do with the kids we’d just nearly killed.
“Yeah thanks,” she mumbled in an angry voice, looking even more flustered than when the guys had been bothering her. Up close, she was even more beautiful and stunning than I remembered. I could tell she still hated me. As stunningly beautiful as she’d become, her electric blue eyes hadn’t changed a bit. They seemed to bear into my soul, penetrating my body in their anger.
“How’s it going, guys?” asked Morgan, looking as though she was trying not to giggle.
“It’s going. Listen, I—"
“Tracy and I were just leaving,” she said, shooting Eva a pointed look as they stood. “Thanks for saving us, we’ll see you around!”
Dom grinned at me.
“Think I’ll go meet your friends,” he said, following them, leaving me and Eva alone. The last thing my brain wanted, but my heart wanted it more than anything else.
5
Eva
“I need to get going,” I said shortly, looking anywhere but at Reid, which was proving to be very difficult. Seeing him standing in the door was one thing. Seeing him sitting in front of me, his tight shirt barely covering his bulging muscles, was something else entirely.
I noticed he’d covered his arms in new tattoos, enhancing the gorgeous curve of his biceps. Holy hell, I couldn’t deny that he looked fucking tantalizing. I’d imagine he’d have girls all over him even if he wasn’t this amazing football player Tracy had told me about.
When had he grown up? How had he grown up so fast? He was almost unrecognizable. Of course, I’d loved him for who he was back when we’d first become friends, but he was a fucking stud now. The guy standing in front of me could have been a fucking Abercrombie and Fitch model and I wouldn’t have been surprised.
Only his faces remained close to the same. His same, sharpened jawline, with the dimples and gorgeous blue-green eyes that I’d fallen into oh-so-many times.
“It’s nice to see you, Eva,” said Reid, a familiar, handsome smile lighting up his face as he looked me up and down.
I knew what I should do. I should walk out of here and pretend he wasn’t there. I should ignore him and go back to my dad’s house and go to bed. But I couldn’t help it. The way he made me feel when he touched me was impossible to forget. And there had always been a small part of me, even after I’d left him, that wanted them still. But I couldn’t forget what happened. I couldn’t forget what I’d seen.
“Wish I could say the same,” I said instead, glaring at him. “I haven’t forgotten about what happened you asshole. And I don’t need your help getting rid of creeps.”
“Eva, I—”
I wanted to recoil at the hand he placed on my shoulder, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. It was the first time he’s touched me since the last time we had sex, all those years ago. In that one second, he brought back all the memories we’d had and shared together.
“No,” I said, gritting my teeth and reluctantly stepping out of reach.
“Eva,” he said calmly, leveling me with those incredible eyes like he knew how to do so well. “I just wanted to tell you it was nice to see you again. Look, I’m sorry—”
I laughed meanly.
“You’re sorry? After completely humiliating me and not giving
a single fuck about it? Friends don’t treat friends that way. And boyfriends sure as hell don’t treat girlfriends that way.” I say, my voice quivering again as the memory came flooding back.
“It wasn’t how you thought,” he said, his jaw clenched. “You are my friend, Eva. You always were. I should have done more to fight for you instead of avoiding the problem. I get it. But why can’t you forgive a stupid kid for his fuck up?”
In my heart, I knew he was right. It was so long ago, why should I still hold a grudge? That wasn’t healthy. But the memory of him being “confronted” by Sydney Coplin flooded my brain…
“You expect me to actually believe that? You deserve to be ghosted by every girl you hook up with. I told you, don’t want to see you again,” I said, hoping the second quiver in my voice went unnoticed.
I spun around and walked out into the rainy night, determined to get away from him. I knew it. I just knew I’d run into Reid if I came back here again. The last person on earth I wanted to see, apart from my ex, and of course he turns up the day I get back into town. I almost wished he’d left me to the frat boys—anything was better than seeing him again and reliving the pain.
10 Years Earlier
“Does he still give you those?” I asked Reid at lunch, pushing his long hair back behind his ear to reveal a walnut-sized bruise.
Reid shrugged and moved his hair back.
“It’s whatever,” he muttered, intent on his sandwich. “Mom’s not here anymore, so dad doesn’t have anyone else to hit.” He shrugged. “I’ll be fine. What about you? How’s your mom doing?”
